At a recent Central Florida Democratic club meeting, a committee member said he was outraged at what the state GOP is doing to purge voter rolls.

“If we lose any close elections this year and the abortion amendment, you can blame (Gov) DeSantis and his party for rigging the outcomes due to his bill of suppressing voter turnout,” said the committee member.  

With months away before any votes are taken on state amendments or races in a general election, Florida Democrats are already looking to use “voter purges” as an excuse if they don’t win in November.

The new Florida state law says, ‘The supervisor of elections must conduct a general registration list maintenance program to protect the integrity of the electoral process by ensuring the maintenance of accurate and current voter registration records in the statewide voter registration system.’

‘A registration list maintenance program must be conducted by each supervisor, at a minimum, once each year, beginning no later than April 1, and must be completed at least 90 days before the date of any federal election.’ Supervisors must send notices to voters who have not participated in the last two general elections. If those voters do not respond, they get moved to the inactive list, also known as purging the voter rolls.

Because of this, Florida Democrats have a reason to be worried. Earlier this year, numbers from the Florida Department of State show that active registered voters in the State decreased by almost 1 million from 2022 to 2023. Florida Democratic registered voters dropped by 467,337, around 10 percent. Republican registered voters saw their numbers decrease by 53,369, 3 percent.

The most significant decline in the voter rolls being purged was in South Florida, with the majority of those listed as “inactive” were primarily registered Democrats.

Close to 86,000 were removed from the voter rolls in Miami-Dade. Broward County saw a drop of around 191,000, and Palm Beach County saw a decline of just over 156,000. The percentage of Democrats who saw a voter decline in all three counties was over 80%.

Democrats and other liberal groups like the League of Women Voters of Florida blame all of this on Florida Senate Bill 7050, which enacted tougher election reforms that included the requirements for maintaining voting lists of voters.

“This bill severely restricts voter registration activities,” said the league.